10 Tips to Help Keep Your Desk Clean
How much stuff do you have sitting on your desk or in your work area? A while back, Coopers & Lybrand (now Price Waterhouse Coopers) released data from a poll on personal organization. One statistic found that, “The average desk worker has 36 hours worth of work on their desk and wastes up to 3 hours a week just “looking” for STUFF!” Finding stuff on my messy desk bears out that statistic. Being disorganized is responsible for a lot of wasted time.
While there is a challenge in the initial cleaning of the messy desk, the regular maintenance often poses the bigger challenge. Here are some tips to help keep the desk clean:
- Sort your mail and toss junk as it arrives. Even with an in-basket, you need to process your mail daily to avoid accumulating a stack of paper.
- Get rid of sticky notes and scraps of paper. Get a single notebook and use it to record notes, phone numbers, web addresses, ideas, to-dos, etc.
- Create a list or binder of regularly referenced material, such as phone numbers, and keep it accessible in a desk drawer.
- Schedule filing time at least once per week.
- Add dated or calendar items to a tickler file system or a diary as soon as they arrive.
- When you stop working on something, put it away until the next time you need it. Don’t leave half-completed projects sitting on your desktop.
- Keep nothing on your desk unless you absolutely need them. If you aren’t joining sheets of paper with tape, move the dispenser off the desk. If you want personal photos in the office, have only one on the desk or better yet, hang them on the wall.
- Keep a reading folder for material you need to read. Schedule a regular reading time to clear that material.
- Create a “waiting for” or pending file to hold items dependent on outside action.
- Create a weekly appointment to clean your desk and this includes dusting or polishing. You might be less inclined to mess up a shiny desk.
It doesn’t take much “neglect” for your workspace to fill up with things that eat at your productivity. A few simple and regular good habits can free up a bunch of extra time for getting things done.
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The Cranking Widgets Blog said,
Wrote on March 1, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
Hacking Work: Getting (and Keeping) Your Desk Clean…
Came across a great post over at Ian’s Messy Desk about the importance (and achievement) of a clean workspace. I especially like #2:
Get rid of sticky notes and scraps of paper. Get a single notebook and use it to record notes, phone numbers, w…
links for 2007-03-03 « Steve Miller’s Blog said,
Wrote on March 2, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
[…] 10 Tips to Help Keep Your Desk Clean « Ian’s Messy Desk (tags: organization Productivity gtd desk) […]
arturogoga » 10 tips para mantener un escritorio ordenado said,
Wrote on March 3, 2007 @ 8:55 am
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links for 2007-03-03 « D e J a M e S e R said,
Wrote on March 3, 2007 @ 9:27 am
[…] 10 Tips to Help Keep Your Desk Clean « Ian’s Messy Desk While there is a challenge in the initial cleaning of the messy desk, the regular maintenance often poses the bigger challenge. Here are some tips to help keep the desk clean: (tags: gtd productivity) […]
bvssunnydale said,
Wrote on March 3, 2007 @ 11:43 am
Keep in mind that the main reason most people have a messy desk is out of fear of losing something - the (erroneous) theory is that if something’s physically close then you’ll be able to put your hands on it quickly. Since most of this stuff is actually INFORMATION and not the paper it lives on, my recommendation is to (1) use a text database program like askSam (unfortunately the indexed version is both indispensible and overpriced at $400) or (2) create a separate document for each category of information (I’m at 12,749 after a decade), e.g. HTML Editors, Chicken Recipes, Fat & Diet, etc., and use a free program like Coperinic, Google Desktop to find them quickly. The trick for any of them is to learn to use MULTIPLE TAGS so that you can find them, otherwise - for example, your searches will pull up a thousand documents with the word ‘HTML’ in them. My tags (just text at the top of each document - immediately following the description line) might be (for “HTML TEXT EDITORS”: htmlt editt editort editorst textt webt designt. Notice I added the “t” but it could be any letter (consistency is the key). It helps enormously because I typically might search for “htmlt” and “textt” and can (almost) instantly find the documents I’m looking for. I also create an index at the top of each document summarizing and dating each item as its added - trust me, after doing this for a decade - it makes all the difference in the world between information-overload and the ability to find and organize things timely. Personally I prefer askSam and (either way) it takes time and effort to implement but for every hour I put into it, it probably saves me four (and reduces stress). Just a suggestion.
Ian McKenzie said,
Wrote on March 3, 2007 @ 1:33 pm
bvs: I’m just realizing the benefit of the type of text-based system you suggest; and I’ve been trying to sort this for a long time.
links for 2007-03-03 « Jeff’s random thoughts said,
Wrote on March 3, 2007 @ 5:27 pm
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10 Tips to Keep Your Desk Clean « Ravi Kapoor said,
Wrote on March 3, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
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Wrote on March 4, 2007 @ 3:24 am
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Desenrolando - » 10 dicas para manter a mesa de trabalho limpa said,
Wrote on March 4, 2007 @ 8:09 pm
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Wrote on March 5, 2007 @ 1:56 am
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paul merrill said,
Wrote on March 5, 2007 @ 6:20 am
Great stuff! And congrats on all the linking you got. Worthy.
10 Tips to Help Keep Your Desk Clean « Who…What…Where…When…Why…How…????? said,
Wrote on March 5, 2007 @ 9:49 am
[…] 10 Tips to Help Keep Your Desk Clean 5 03 2007 How much stuff do you have sitting on your desk or in your work area? […]
MessDoc said,
Wrote on March 5, 2007 @ 10:49 am
This is good advice for many folks, but this would completely suck for me as a card-carrying member of the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ club. If I were to follow tips like #6 (”When you stop working on something, put it away until the next time you need it. Don’t leave half-completed projects sitting on your desktop.”), I’d never get around to finishing anything.
I recommend a book called “Organizing for your brain type” (ISBN: 0312339771), which offers suggestions for the different ways in which many people think. The author breaks it down to four types (which may be a little simplistic in some ways) corresponding to how we live and think.
andrew said,
Wrote on March 5, 2007 @ 10:54 am
Great list.
A friend of mine, Van, went to an awesome extreme for #7. He put all of his computer peripherals under his desk!
http://kooki.ca/van/
Ian McKenzie said,
Wrote on March 5, 2007 @ 11:55 am
MessDoc: A tickler/reminder/bring-forward system is definitely one of the tools necessary to make the clean desk work. That’s probably a subject for a future post.
Andrew: I bookmarked that peripherals set-up when I came across it last week. I like that idea.
links for 2007-03-06 « avant garb. said,
Wrote on March 6, 2007 @ 12:27 am
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